


I Couldn't Sleep

by ElfGrove



Series: Shiro/Pidge Fluff Collection [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Fluff, Written on the assumption the age gap is small
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 03:51:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7206566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElfGrove/pseuds/ElfGrove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a bit of emotional fluff between the Space Kids. (Spoilers for season 1 included.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Couldn't Sleep

She woke, back and neck aching dully, console still propped between her knees. She’d fallen asleep while working. Again. 

Hunk or Coran would definitely chastise her for the thousandth time if they found out. “You need your rest. It’s not healthy.” “You’re a Paladin of Voltron, what if you fall asleep in the middle of a battle!? Be more responsible!”

She snorted and set the console aside before stretching slowly, trying to soothe knotted muscles.

They sure liked to complain about her habits, but they never asked when she’d had time to reverse-engineer things like the invisibility functionality from the Training Deck to Green Lion’s shields. No, they were just grateful she’d done it and it was available when it was needed for critical tactical plans. It wouldn’t exist, and they might not have survived some of those battles without the products of her all-nighters. She didn’t know why they couldn’t make _**that**_ connection.

But still, a couple of hours sleep in a bed might be good right now. She was stuck on this latest problem, and clearly banging her head against the figurative wall wasn’t getting her anywhere.

She stood up slowly, squinting against the darkened hallway to orient herself towards the Paladin quarters. The castleship dimmed most of the lights in areas not in active use and during the Altean equivalent of nighttime, which was apparently now. Overriding that to light up areas where she was working hadn’t been a priority yet. Maybe later. There was a lot of stuff in that later pile, and she could see well enough by the dim running lights.

The rows of empty cryo-chambers were a bit creepy in the dark, but she’d never admit that to anyone. Lance would mock her for for ages the moment he found out. Never mind that he wouldn’t get near them for a week after the incident with the AI getting corrupted. He was such a jerk sometimes.

She stopped in her tracks when she saw something out of place ahead in the dim lights of the hallway. A dark form standing in front of one of the cryo-chambers. They had all been empty, right? If there had been any other Alteans here, Coran and Allura would have woken them by now. Sendak was gone. There was no one to have woken up and be standing around down here. All of the other Paladins should be asleep.

“Just imagining things,” She muttered, walking forward again, determined to ignore what must be a trick of shadows in the dark hall.

The figure didn’t go away as she got closer though. It became more solid, details slowly becoming clear. A head rested against the glass of the chamber, Fists raised and pressed against the glass as if the person was trapped inside rather than outside of the contraption. She got closer, and it suddenly became clear. It wasn’t some strange Altean or an intruder to the castle.

“Shiro,” She spoke with an edge of mocking, her quiet tone encouraged by the silent halls. “Don’t you ever sleep?”

She’d expected his gentle smile and a witty comeback about how she wasn’t one to talk. He didn’t respond. She heard him muttering against the glass, voice ragged in the way it had been when Sendak had dragged him onto the comm to to taunt her while she tried to regain control of the castle from him back on Arus. Not when he’d yelled for her to not listen to Sendak, the first sentence. The hopeless ‘what do you want from me’ when he hadn’t known anyone but his captor could hear him. She hated hearing him like that.

“Broken,” He muttered into the glass. “Broken soldier. Worthless.”

“Shiro,” She stepped closer, raising her voice slightly. Trying to catch his attention. “Shiro, what’s wrong?”

“What kind of monster…”

She grabbed his arm and pulled hard, forcing him to stumble and look at her instead of the empty cryo-chamber. Sendak’s empty cryo-chamber. “Shiro!”

He blinked, looking small and lost despite the height difference. “Pidge? What are you doing down here?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Her voice came out harsher than she meant it to. She didn’t like this. It wasn’t scary, but it made her sad and angry at once. It was easy to forget in the daylight sometimes. Easy to forget between his confidence and patient attitude, that the Galra had done something terrible to him. That they’d had him for a year. Easy to forget that he wasn’t okay.

“Couldn’t sleep,” There was that gentle smile. It looked more like a mask than usual in the dim hallway.

“Do you ever?”

He chuckled, “Maybe not as much as I should.”

“Me too,” She admitted, searching his face for… something. Not sure what. “You are **_not_** worthless.”

The facade crumpled, “You weren’t supposed to hear that. It’s not what you think.”

“Then what is it?”

“Pidge…”

“You survived. You survived Them, and you’re with us now. You’re a Paladin, and a leader.” She tightened her grip on his arm, “Maybe we’re not safe, but you’re not alone.”

“I know, Pidge. You don’t have to worry about…”

“I do worry,” She cut him off harshly. “You’re my friend. I’m **_supposed_** to worry about you. You let me lean on you for all kinds of stuff about my dad and brother. You support me, even when I wanted to leave. I can handle you needing to lean back. You can trust me.”

Shiro let out a long, slow breath that manged to shudder only a little bit at the end, “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Shiro…”

He put his free hand on her shoulder, “I’m fine. Really.”

“You are not.” She slumped, feeling defeated. “You’re allowed to not be okay, you know. You’re human, and you’ve been through a lot.”

There was a snort, and she looked up to see a half-hearted smile as he stared at the metal arm, now removed from her shoulder, “That’s kind of debatable, isn’t it?”

“Is that why were you saying ‘broken soldier’?”

“Maybe,” He shrugged. “Part of it. I failed a lot of people. I have a lot to make up for.”

“You haven’t failed me.”

“Katie,” His voice was heartbroken. “I’ve probably failed you the most of all.”

“I don’t think so.” She still had his non-metal arm captured in a tense grip, but didn’t loosen her hold. “I think you and I are going to save my family, together. I think you’re the person I trust the most out of everyone here, flaws included.”

“I shot Sendak into space. He was probably our best chance to…”

“And good riddance to that murderer,” She growled. “It’s not as though he was going to help us. We’ll have better chances hacking Galra tech than trusting anything he might have told us.”

“It’s not a choice I should have made for everyone. It’s not a choice a good person should have made.”

“You did it because you thought he was a threat to all of us, right?”

“I’m… not sure anymore.”

“Well, I think he was a threat. I think you protected us from being manipulated by him.” She released his arm, only to jump up far enough to envelop him in a hug. “You’re not a monster, Shiro. I trust you.”

He leaned down into the hug, holding her back gingerly, as if afraid to break her. She only tightened her grip in response.

He dropped his head to rest against her shoulder, and finally returned pressure in the hug, “Thank you, Katie.”

“Anytime.”

He tightened his grip on her, something desperate in the motion.

“Anytime you need me,” She confirmed into his silence.

They stood there for a long time before breaking the embrace, Shiro looking embarrassed, and Katie pointedly ignoring the dampness around his eyes.

“We should both get some sleep before the rest of the castle wakes up.”

“Probably.”

“I’ll walk you back to your quarters.”

She chuckled, “Don’t go treating me like a lady now. I’m still your teammate.”

He smiled, and it was warm again, “Got it, Pidge.”

“Not that I wouldn’t mind you calling me Katie more often,” She said lightly, pretending it didn’t mean as much to her as it did that someone here, light years from Earth, knew her name. Her real name. “In private though. It’d just be weird to have Lance or Hunk start calling me that after all this time.”

“I think I can manage that.”


End file.
